Monday, December 5, 2011

This past weekend I traveled up to Seattle, Washington for the Urban Craft Uprising holiday show. Wow, what a show!

It was quite the marathon of a weekend. My good friend Aimee came along and helped out. First we stopped by the Laika Studio for a quick holiday show on Friday afternoon. Literally it lasted 1 hour, it was the quickest craft show ever! Then we drove up to Seattle and started setting up my booth display again (twice in one day - whew!). A late night sushi dinner was all we could muster after this long day. Saturday we woke up early and finished setting up for Urban Craft Uprising and then the doors opened at 11. Over the weekend 10,000 people came into this show. It was awesome as usual. So many appreciative customers. So many mobiles will be shared throughout the Seattle surrounding area this holiday season. I felt the love. I am grateful.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

I finally have my new website up online to share with the world! This is very exciting new for me. Let me tell ya!! Click on the image above and it'll send you over to check it out.

I have always made my own websites for years, and they aren't so spectacular. But I am a DIY kinda girl and lacking a budget to pay a website designer to do it right. I just let it slide for way too long.

One day while looking at some statistics for my Etsy, an advertisement caught my eye. I clicked on it, basically it was a listing on Etsy for 1 page of website design. This got me thinking... I started a bit of an Etsy search and found a local Portland woman and contacted her, asked her for a quote on making me a new site.

I like the idea of working with another creative entrepreneur, not necessarily an established website design business, but another person like myself that lives in Portland and is following her passion. The concept is so much more about mutually beneficial business than just services rendered.

And wow - it worked! I have a site that I love and it promotes my work in focus.

Martha J Baker is the name of the woman, and she is a great website architect. Thank you Martha!

I spent all of Saturday at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, attending seminars and watching streamed broadcasts of talks in other parts of the world. It was a great opportunity to connect with my peers, learn skills to find new success.

I am not selling a product. I am selling a part of a journey, a ticket to the game.

He kept telling us it was all about repeatable stories. And all day long I was struck by the importance of repeatable stories. Every speaker seemed to add punch and glory to their presentations by having some good repeatable stories. Every successful business mentioned was brought up via a notable story. Stories play such a valuable role in our lives as small business owners: they put a face on our brand, they make us memorable and they serve as a catalyst for conversation.

I love a good story, and it made so much sense to me the role that repeatable stories play in incredible branding and professional success. And Jack tells a great story! He is very funny and I love listening to him talk about his business. Rogue Ales is an amazing local business, the list of things they are involved in is a mile long and never ceases to amaze me. One thing he mentioned that struck me:

Rogue Ales has never made any attempt to grow bigger, they have just worked to get better.

This message was repeated throughout the day, both in Portland and Berlin. A message about making your business better.

The keynote speaker at the Berlin conference, Chad Dickerson, the CEO of Etsy, was streamed online and after lunch we all watched it together in the commons of PNCA. He spoke about Courage.

When he was asked by an audience member what to do when courage fails you, his response was to get up out of bed each day and think how can I make it better today. He emphasized it was all about the small steps to make it better.

Again the message was not about how to grow our businesses, but rather, how to work harder to make them better. And I must say, it was his repeatable stories that made him personable and fun to watch. Here it is if you would like to check it out:

It was clear throughout the day that the most successful businesses are owned by extremely passionate people. I know for sure that my enthusiasm for my work is what keeps me going. And seriously, persistence is key.

The keynote speakers here in Portland were the owners of Stumptown Coffee and QueenBee Creations. Both companies have grown recently and I've head about it thru media outlets like Facebook. Both companies needed more money and the paths they each chose were very different. Stumptown took on investors and was shredded in the press for doing so. QueenBee also faced needing more money and considered investors, but in the end decided to shrink her business in order to maintain growth.

Want more details than that? Are you a fan of Stumptown and QueenBee and interested in hearing more? Hear it from their mouths directly, here's a video of the talk:

Back to my experience at the conference... the last session I attended was led by Jackie Peterson, author of "Better Smarter Richer", a great book that serves to help creative small business owners make more money.

Jackie informed us her middle name is "Raise Your Prices" and she likes to tell her clients to do so. Her philosophy on what makes a successful artist wealthy centered around developing a deep and narrow niche. I love this venn diagram she uses to illustrate how we could work to make our businesses better:

She spoke about the pressures and stress of the "Time/Money Squeeze". I swear she pounded the nail right on the head. So many artists like myself have a lot of passion and talent but with the growth of our businesses we experience a serious time/money squeeze. Her answer: develop a very specific deep and narrow niche and set measurable monthly goals, structure your time to meet these goals, and finally Charge More! Remember this is Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson talking here. Words of the wise. She kept re-iterating and illustrating the value of working your business into this very deep and narrow niche.

Can I share a repeatable story that Jackie used in her presentation?

A client of hers, Amy McAuley of Occulus Fine Carpentry, came to Jackie one day for a meeting and told her she had decided to get rid of all her power tools. This seemed shocking, for a struggling professional woodworker to ditch all of her power tools, but she explained to Jackie that she had decided to focus her business on historic window restoration and learning the traditional techniques to do so. In focusing her work on windows created before the introduction of power tools, Amy McAuley had found a incredibly deep and specific niche for her business. This niche was so deep and specific, that within the next few years she became a renowned and sought after historic preservationist and now her business is thriving.

A deep and specific niche. This is what Jackie Raise-Your-Prices Peterson was all about. This niche is the intersection of a great amount of talent, passion and money. Evidently if we want to raise our prices, we need to declare to the world our professional deep and specific niche.

I found this very interesting. I took more notes in Jackie's session than anything else all day. And she has a free online book - check it out (its basically the presentation I attended)

Okay... so this is a very long blog entry, but hey, if you didn't get to attend the conference, or you felt like hearing what I had to say about my experience there... this is it!

Throughout the day I got to revel in my creative community of small business owners. Exchange stories and ideas and create a list of things that I want to do to better my business and nurture my relationships within this community.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Pictured here is my beloved easel. Its pretty old and needs a little tender loving care, but its a great easel and has sentimental value for me. Even though I haven't used it in a few years, I can't bring myself to give it away. So I think I will weather-coat it and keep it outside. Damn thing is big and awkward. Hard to get through doorways and takes up a lot of space in a room. I have moved with it many times over the years and curse its awkwardness, but hey, my Dad made it, and I am an artist, so what can I do but consider myself lucky.

Years ago when I was in highschool and my brother had gone away to college, our Dad, woodworker extraordinaire, took up the challenge of making a good easel. You see, my brother had decided to minor in fine arts in college and so I think my dad was making this gift, you know, to support his son's choices an' all!

My Dad is an engineer, so he had to make up some plans and try out some ideas with a prototype. As I was the little sister still living at home, I got to test out the prototype! I was taking a lot of art classes at the time at the CIA, so this was a great opportunity! In the end, for some reason my Dad never made the finished easel, this one was the beginning and the end of his efforts in easel making. So I was pretty pleased to keep it for myself!

So that is the story. Love you Dad :) still have the easel and its still wonderful. Thanx.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

I finally had an empty kiln available to do experiments over the weekend! I wanted to control all the variables and see the effects of changing the temperature the glass melts thru the screen...

3 major things seem to effect the melts: time, temp and quantity.

So I kept the quantity of glass the same and the time it was held at the melting temp was also kept constant. What I changed was the temperature. This caused all sorts of variations: the roundness of the shape, the amount of bubbles in the melt, the patterns of color in the clear glass and the thickness of the finished piece.

The experiments continue... I just thought I'd share what came out of the kiln this weekend...

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

This weekend I attended the gala fund-raising event of the year at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. It is called the Red Hot Summer Party & Auction. A collaborative piece that I worked on with Dennis McConnell was in the silent auction. The museum invites the artists to this event, and Dennis could not go, so I drove up to Tacoma on Saturday to represent for the two of us. This year the work was juried and we had the chance to win some amazing prizes, as in a week in the Museum hot shop with their team and their equipment and they foot the bill (amazing!!) and I think there was a $10,000 prize as well. We didn't win, but it was an honor to have my efforts displayed in such good company! And some lucky bidder got to take our piece home with him.The event was a wild and luxurious. The glass artwork on display was awe-inspiring. So many of my favorite artists had work in the auction and so many of the patrons of the museum came dressed in tuxes and gowns. I hope it was a successful night for the museum, as I know they raise a good deal of their annual budget at this particular event. But regardless it was pretty amazing. I felt under-dressed. I had somehow missed the memo that I should show up in my most fancy attire. Luckily I did dress up, and I clean up pretty well, but I felt embarrassed non-the-less. Although honestly many of the artists were not dressed in their finest. In fact it made it sorta easy to assume who was an artist and who was there to shop. :) My first thought when I saw all the formal evening wear was that I had missed my chance to really dress up.

If you'd like to sorta see what it was like, there is a video online from a live stream done by Team Photogenic, its long, go to 33min to see the best couple minutes of the whole thing.

While I wanted to take pictures of the people and their formal outfits, instead I was snapping shots of the amazing glass.

The flowers above, made by Kari Russell-Pool were inspired by dalias in a Tacoma garden. When I look at this piece I can't help by gasp at the thought of what it must feel like to assemble this vase! Wow! I love the detail of this vase.

This cocktail set made me swoon. I want it. I can't afford it. I love it. Someone lucky now owns this amazingly perfect set.

All in all it was a fantastic night. A lot of driving, very humbling, excellent food at the dinner and the best part was a presentation about the Museum's "Kids and Glass" program. I hope to blog more about this program soon...

I took more pictures as well... they are on flickr... lots of shots of the glass installations outside the museum as well, I put them up on Flickr

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

This is my favorite experiment so far... the results are all mine! I will keep it and eat out of it and cherish this. Some things are meant to be kept and this is why I love successful experiments! Its kind of heavy, dunno if I can fix that in future melts. I have some theories to try. They simply turn out very thick. Lets just say they are super sturdy :)This bowl was made from scrap, melted thru a screen, cooked into a good looking circle and then slumped into a mold. Voila. My new bowl.

Monday, July 25, 2011

First I melted a pile of glass scraps thru a screen to form a round flat puddle.

Then I re-fused the glass (to level out any bubbles that had come to the surface and popped which leaves sharp edges).

Finally I draped the glass over a metal milk shake container to obtain this sort of ripply vase effect...

I thought it would make a nice lamp shade (although its small, maybe 8" around and only 6" tall) because it looks incredible when its lit up like this... allows all the swirls and ripples in the color to pop...

So I went to Ikea and perused the lights, I thought I'd find something to take the shade off and use this instead (maybe drill a hole in the center of the glass to put a light fixture thru) but no luck. Very disappointing. But I didn't walk out totally sad, instead I purchased some striped fabric covered hat boxes and a few over-sized glass canning jars for other irrelevant craft purposes... Next I will check out the Re-Building Center, as they might have something older and unique that would fit the bill.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This band plays almost every weekend lately down by Ankeny Fountain. Street music at its best! I can hear them from where I am selling my artwork at the Portland Saturday Market, they make my mobiles dance (and maybe me too!). This Saturday I flagrantly abandoned my booth to take this video. Luckily I have good neighbors to make sales for me while I was gone :) Thanks!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Meet my new kiln tool - its called a screen melt system. Basically you melt glass thru the screen and it puddles in the form below. My new friend Steve made this for me, its awesome and I have been having fun experimenting with it.The idea is simple: melt glass thru the screen and the right balance of clear and color will create chaotic patterns in the finished puddle of glass. I have hundreds of pounds of scrap glass accumulating and this screen melt system could be a way of transforming it into beautiful art.

Here's what I've been doing in my kiln experiments...

- first I weigh out the glass so that the scrap used will equal the volume I want in the finished puddle (I have been using about 800grams to make a 9"plate)

- then I transfer this scrap onto the screen in the kiln (I have prepped the screen by laying fiber blanket against the steel of the form that the glass melts into and along the kiln shelf (so that final puddle will not stick to anything)

- then I melt the glass, using a program that cooks the glass at 1600degrees Fahrenheit

- once its cold and cleaned off the scrap has transformed into a puddle!

Here are my first three melts, I think they are beautiful.

I have been learning a lot along the way. These experiments will probably turn into bowls in my kitchen.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The shop where I teach is in North Portland in an old train barn on Columbia Blvd.

There are three key things that I associate with my commute to work:

the train (I love the colors and shapes of the graffiti and train cars)

the smell of cookies (there is a Kraft (used to be Nabisco) plant a few blocks from the shop)

the view of Mt Hood

The train always honks as it goes by the shop (there are 3 bridges it passes underneath, so they all honk 3 times). There is a lot of industry around the shop that uses these trains, as they head to and from the big ports on the river. They only thing I do not like about the trains is when they honk just as I am opening the front door - this makes me jump and I think they do so just to see my reaction! Its loud!

The cookie factory is always pumping out cookies and crackers, they make Oreos and Wheat Thins. When the insanely wonderful smell of chocolate wafts in the breeze my brain always says "brownies!" - I used to think they must be making brownie mix in that factory, but I have since learned it is the chocolate cookies for Oreos! And what I thought was the intoxicating smell of Vanilla Wafers in the making, is the vanilla cream stuffing for the Oreos. Yum. One day I hope to get a tour of this factory. Oh yes I do!

Best of all though (does it get better than the smell of cookies?!) is the sight of Mt. Hood. The view is amazing from Columbia Blvd. She glows majestically, perfectly framed by trees around the road. I always want to snap pictures, a few days ago I couldn't resist as the sun was setting and the mountain looked so amazing. That is the photo above.

The view of Mt. Hood has always been a present factor in my work as a glass artist. The first shop space I rented was in a barn up on Mt Hood. I rented there for a couple of years. Learning to snow board in the winter and enjoying the cold rivers in the summer were integral parts of working on Mt. Hood. It was an awesome way of working as a glass artist. And now I will always have this positive association with the view of Mt. Hood.

In my garage studio at home I made a painting of Mt. Hood and hung it behind an old window (there's a wall that I thought should have a window and so I put a fake one there!).

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Last night I had the awesome opportunity to join a group of artists at the Bullseye Glass Company to discuss KGRC. That would stand for Kiln Glass Resource Centers. Everyone is in town for BeCon and Bullseye generously hosted a meet n' greet round table event for the owners of Kiln Glass Resource Centers. We had a great discussion - I have so many new ideas now! And it was great to meet so many incredible people. Nathan Sandberg gave us a great presentation about achieving movement in fused glass. It was called "Going with the flow" and featured the work Bullseye did with artist Jun Kaneko. Really inspiring. I am drawn to movement in artwork and this presentation was all about causing motion in the glass with your kiln forming process. Very interesting.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Friday was the big international Craft Party - Erin and I went to the Pendleton Woolen Mill to check out their festivities - what fun! Awesome party favors, lots of woolen needle felting - I made a bookmark, there were also stations to make felted soap, felted wrist cuffs, and felted banners.

Also it was a great opportunity to shop! For one thing, in the picture above, the gallery space we were crafting in is use to showcase Pendleton blankets and tapestries. There are a number of tapestries that were designed by famous artists and a portion of the proceeds from sales from these tapestries goes to the Pendleton Native American Scholarship Fund. AND these tapestries are on sale now! It seems they are converting the space into a gallery for their blanket inventory. The sale is huge. Some are only $99! I may not have the details entirely correct, but seriously, there are some amazing deals going on!

I meanwhile shopped for wool. Visions of a set of woolen blankets sewn into a sleeping bag of sorts guided me through the aisles at the mill. The night before I went camping with Tim and we froze our butts off with three blankets on an air-mattress. All night I had wakeful dreams of wool blankets to keep us warm. Even better - a woolen sleeping bag the size of a queen airmattress! Oh yeah baby. So there I was at Pendleton, shopping for wool for this project. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg, and I don't mind getting crafty. There are remnants that they sell at $5/lbs, which I thought I'd felt (so they are thick and soft) and then sew together like a patchwork quilt. Then I saw there were entire bolts of a few old patterns that were 80%OFF. That made some of them only $12/yard. Holy crap! So I bought 4 yards of 60" wide Pendleton Wool for only $12/yard. Shocking.

Drop by the Museum during regular hours, 11 am to 6 pm, and craft in the Lab all day long (regular admission applies). Help sew quilts for the Quilts for Quake Survivors project or choose from three different crafting stations: embroidery, Japanese-style papercutting or a Mighty Ugly project.

If you'd like to participate during the day, please RSVP on the Meetup.com page. The tickets available for purchase through this page are for the evening party only.

Visit the Pendleton Woolen Mill from 2-5:30pm and get a tour, play with the woolen craft products, view some pieces from the archives and network with other craft artists.

Evening

At 7:00 pm, the doors will open back up to the Museum and the real party will start! We're taking over the entire space with complete with food, beer and wine, a DJ, and even more crafting stations. Your door donation will get you an entry into the drawing for a whole slew of crafty prizes (books, gift certificates, handmade goods and more!), some food and beverage tickets, and a lot of crafty fun!

Throughout the evening you can rotate through hand-felting, origami, hand-weaving, and make your own crafty artist trading cards. The quilts made for the project will be on display, and Modern Domestic will have them available for sale and sell raffle tickets.

Is your head spinning yet?! This is going to be the biggest, craftiest and most awesome craft party Etsy has ever seen! Plus all proceeds will go to Mercy Corps' Japan Relief Fund, so you can get your craft on and feel good about giving back to those in dire need of help.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

This year for my birthday I want to encourage myself to cook at home more.

A trip to the farmers market = challenge to use everything we bought!

I've already washed and marinated the asparagus, put away all the greens, parsley in water, basil turned into pesto, radishes left to soak in cold water, steaks de-frosting for bbq action and cookies and baguette will be consumed before the end of the day.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Last night was the second IHeartArt:Portland Mixer event. I would say I was there as a volunteer, but I didn't really do much work. :) I was there as an IHeartArt representative, to enjoy the atmosphere and network with everyone. This event is really incredible: a free opportunity for established gallery curators to interview artists - a free opportunity for these artists to introduce themselves to the curators.Its a "speed dating" event - replace single people looking for a hot date with artists looking for exposure.I felt this nurturing energy around the crowd; everyone wanting to encourage each other and network with one-another. The picture above is a couple of the artists waiting to get interviewed and talking with each other about their portfolios.There was a seminar recently (also organized by IHeartArt) on how artists should approach galleries and shops. Attending artists learned about what a curator might be looking for in a presentation, and then for this event there was a set of requirements for what the artists should bring with them. It was a well organized and smooth running event. Over 40 artists interviewed with 16 curators. The artists seemed exhausted but exhilarated by the end of the event, and had many possible avenues to follow up with. And all the curators I spoke with afterwards were very enthusiastic about wanting to work with the artists they had met. All the curators seemed to have a common sentiment that it was outstanding to meet so many artists they had never heard of. And they each had a handful of names that stuck out of artists that really made a great first impression.Speed dating for artists - Portland Oregon style!I really adore this concept and I appreciate all the hard work and care that goes into these events. IHeartArt is all about advocating for artists, educating the local community and providing the networking opportunities that make our passions grow into lucrative adventures.

Thanks IHeartArt for another great event!

If you want to read about my experience at last years IHeartArt Mixer:

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The mini glass globe fun continues! I went to the pet store and stocked up on some knowledge, and some aquatic life to put in my tiny glass globes. Snails and plants that can live together, a nice relationship really: the plant causes algae to grow and the snail eats the algae and keeps the glass clean. The snail also eats this particular plant, so it won't starve, rest assured! So hopefully I've created a micro-ecosystem.

Actually I've created 2 micro-ecosystems so far, the one pictured above sits on table like a tiny fish bowl, the other one (in the video below) hangs and is more tear drop shaped. My little experiments. We'll see if the snails survive and make babies! Who knows, someone asked me if they will crawl out of the globes. I have no idea? So I keep checking to make sure they are still in there :)

For sure they are super cute! I find watching them move to be really fun. Go figure. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure - proof these snails are alive (as opposed to glass snails, which I could make, that would be cute as well...)

Friday, May 13, 2011

I have been making mobiles of glass jars. The jars are things I have made, blowing the forms using a torch. Each one is just a little bit different. They are simple round shapes with round openings, no flat bottoms. They do not sit on a table - they float! I wrap a bit of steel wire around the lip of the jar and attach a swivel. When you touch one (which how can you help but touch that enticing glass globe and wonder what you can put inside!) it dances in response to your fingers!You can put anything inside the jars in this mobile - that is why I called this piece "Sheer Potential" - the content is all yours. You could put little words written on paper, love notes and inspiration. Or small feathers or flowers you picked up on a walk. The glass washes out easily, its made of Pyrex glass, so it is not a problem to wash it out (although it is attached to a mobile). Here are some more ideas: plants, snails, moss, feathers, small toys, fake flowers, shells, plastic animals, sparkly things, jewelry, small candles (you could pour wax in there and put little wicks and make them candles!), LED lights, used computer chips, sewing notions, bobbins, buttons... oh my. I'm getting carried away. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of different objects in the jars, today I am going to the pet store in search of a snail to put in a jar :)

I love these shapes and how they hang in the air waiting for interaction. This is a very impressionable mobile! Not only does it move if you blow at the pieces or touch them, it holds whatever you think of putting in the three little jars. Reflection and interaction - a lovely little bit of art to share with the world. Thanks for checking it out :)